I love to cook and teach vegan cooking. In March 2006, I was inspired by cooking blogs like Vegan Lunchbox to post my dinner plate pictures.
I do my family's cooking. Since I met my wife in June 2004, I'm proud that I've not repeated a dinner for her; we weren't together every night, but since fall 2005, we've shared most dinners. I think I can keep up the unique creations through spring 2006 - maybe beyond! (Still going in March'08!)

Sunday, August 23, 2015

I made a flageolet bean with vegetables as part of some dishes that I delivered today to a client, and reserved enough for our dinner. I used a recipe from a few months ago (May 2015) that I came up with as my base. Like in May, I soaked, rinsed, and cooked in my Instant Pot pressure cooker and cooked with enough water to just cover, not for 26m as before, but for 24m. I think that I can get by with cooking beans for less time than I normally do and am trying to fine tune this (there is no problem with longer cooking as the beans become more digestible, but why take the time and energy if not necessary?).

After I let the pressure come down and could open the pot, I added fresh kale, and frozen mustard greens, broccoli rabe, collard greens, and butternut squash cubes, and cooked for an additional 2 minutes. I added raw onion, salt, turmeric, and ground cumin seed, as well as a little lime juice, and served.

I made some Madagascar Pink rice and tried soaking the rice for a few hours before cooking (I've heard this softens the rice and possibly increases the bioavailability of the nutrients), discarding the soak water, and cooking as normal. I found some excellent organic heirloom tomatoes in the market a few days ago, and (after doing some still life photography yesterday) cut one up and served it with some fleur de sel salt.

Dinner was very good! The beans, greens, and squash all went very well together. The squash was - well, squashed and smooth. I wonder how the mouth feel would be different if the frozen squash were cooked maybe for a minute under pressure to hopefully retain the cubes; in any case, the creaminess complimented the beans. I think that the beans could have been ready in even a few minutes less time, but no complaints about the softness of the dish.

The rice was softer than usual. I actually like a little more bit to rice, but don't mind exploring soaking more. The tomato was awesome!